Hi all, it has been a while but I thought I’d give those of you who are following a little update.

The OER carburetors have been installed for a while now and the past couple of months have involved the tuning of them.

Tuning of them hasn’t been hard.. With a wide band O2 sensor probe in the exhaust and a safe piece of road, I was able to get the car going straight off the bat. Wide open throttle has been the easiest to tune, while idle, cruise, and low to medium acceleration has been the most challenging.

I will do a little write up on how to tune the carbs at a later date, but depending on what rev range you’re in and how much throttle pressure you’re using, you are using certain jets. There is the pilot, main, and air corrector jet which controls cruise/idle/low revs (and throttle), mid range RPM and full throttle, and upper range full throttle respectively.

And because the pilot jet is the main jet you will be using on the streets, it has been the most difficult to tune. The one jet affects your cruise mixtures, slow acceleration mixture, and idle mixture. So far, idle and cruise mixtures have been spot on but slow acceleration mixtures go a tad lean (no matter what jet size I use) which is obviously not safe for the motor. 12.5-13:1 AFR is the goal for wide open throttle, 13.5-14 is the aim for cruise and similar for idle.

You can see in the graph below, I am taking off in first gear at a medium rate, shifting into second, accelerating and then shifting into third and so on. The rich dip soon after gear change is due to the pump jet (yes, another jet you can change!). Note how it goes lean as I stay in a gear.

The issue here (I hope) is that OER pilot jets have a fixed air bleed hole and this contributes to the upper mixture of the lower, pilot jet, circuit. I have since purchased Weber jets which supposedly fit and I will use them to fine tune.

I am currently running #55 pilots which provide a spot on cruise and idle mix but lean acceleration. This OER jet has two ~1.2mm air bleed holes, and to richen this mixture up, I need to reduce that size. I have purchased Weber #55 pilot with air bleed holes half that size. We will see how it goes.. I have played with fuel float levels, throttle plate positions, balanced the carbs, checked timing and it has all fail to rectify the problem.

There were many jobs that needed to be completed by the 7th of December to make it to the 2014 Classic Japan event. Following on from the previous post, I had to repair my damaged front lip, change a head gasket/head cylinder due to an overheating issue and install my Kameari seats! This needed to be repaired.. I wasn’t going to fork out another $450 for a lip.. And these needed to be installed. Within the first week of working on the lip, allocating an hour or so every day after work into it, I managed to turn the lip into something like this.. It was at least one piece again. All fibreglassed back up. And then I managed to get some filler onto the lip to even out the large imperfections and it pretty much just sat like this for the next few weeks.. The tedious task of fixing the small imperfections took its toll. I could not be bothered doing it but as long as I managed to get rid of one spot a day or two, I was happy. Eventually, I got over seeing the lip in all different colours, making it harder to spot the imperfections also, I gave it a lick of primer. Work picked up on it and then it eventually got done a week before Classic Japan. Good as new! Rewinding a few weeks, during the stages of me not being motivated to repair the lip, I pulled my head off to see what the issue was. My car had kept chewing through coolant without a sign of any leaks. Nothing real obviously wrong with the head. Oh no.. What’s that in cylinder 6? Yep, there’s the coolant. So it was time to strip the head, get it skimmed and put a new headgasket on and hope for the best. And what can I say, things didn’t go to plan. The head was far too corroded to be reinstalled or repaired. As you can see in the cylinder closest, the water gallery is far too close to the combustion area causing the head gasket to go and leak water. I could reintall the head and use it for a short term but it would eventually blow again. It was time to source a new head, and that’s what I did.. $450 later.. Filthy, but it wasn’t as corroded as my old head. I stripped the head down, replaced the valve stem seals. Thanks to my mate Ricky for lending a hand get the valves back in. Home made tools aren’t the easiest things to use! Having adjusted the valve clearances, the new head was ready for installation. Those of you familiar with the L series motors, you would know that something needs to wedge into the chain to hold the tension while you remove the head.. Well I thought I did that right but… As you can see, I didn’t wedge the chain properly and had to remove my entire front casing to fix this up. A 15 minute job of reinstalling the head turned into a few hours. Anyway.. head went back on and all is well! While the head was off, I also painted my rocker covers wrinkle black, I unfortunately don’t have a photo of that yet. EDIT: Here it is..

Some of you may recall my cooling system being over pressurised and pouring out of the overflow once it got warm. Turns out it was the thermostat being installed the wrong way! Oooopssss… Easy fix. Now that the car was driveable again, that motivated me to finish off the front lip.. Last job before Classic Japan, installing the Kameari seats. Comparing them to the standard seats, the Kameari seats were a lot narrower so the rails needed to be modified. Simple enough.. Little did I know that ‘simple’ task took an entire day of running around. It got in there eventually. They look great! Tight around the hips but bearable. The car is now ready for Classic Japan which was held the following day. Sunday morning came around and it was pouring down with rain. A group of us woke up at 6:30am and had a talk about whether we were going to the event. Some of us had never driven in the rain before. With Classic Japan being one of the biggest events of the year, and the amount of effort we all put in to get the car ready, we decided to go… It was a great turnout despite the poor weather. Driving in the rain was very interesting. Windscreens fogging up, wipers not working properly.. Definitely an experience. 1pm rolled on by and the weather had taken a turn for the worse so we decided to leave. Charlie and I raced.. I lost lol. I had no traction whatsoever being on the tram tracks. Charlie – 1, Adam – 0. We all lined up at Karl’s place and went for lunch. And that’s how it all went down. Everyone made it home safe, defect free. My car gave me no troubles. On the way home, this happened. The clocks went around and I now have a new car! I have a trip to Japan booked for January 2015, this is where I will be attending the JCCA New Year Meeting in Tokyo. For those who aren’t familiar with the JCCA New Year Meeting, it is basically one of the biggest gatherings of classic cars in Japan, where a swap meet is also held! I can’t wait to see what I could pick up over there. Triple carbs is next on the list. Until then, it’s all about enjoying the car this summer.

Hey all, so following on from my previous post about future mods, I had planned on buying OEM head light covers and triple carburetors.. I have not yet picked up a set of triples, but I have got the OEM head light covers and purchased Kameari seats.

Before I get into that there were a few little things I wanted to do. I first cut and rewelded the shifter as after installing the RB gearbox, neutral was sitting far too close to the radio.

You can see the angle the original shifter was sitting at. I simply cut it at the bottom and rewelded it together where it needed to be.

Second issue was the leaking heater tap. You can probably see why. This fixed up the hot interior even when the valve was closed.

Next up was the refurbishment of the steering wheel. I just gave it a new lick of paint and tried to clean it up a little and I think it now looks great.

So while I was researching triple carbs and looking out for head light covers, these seats came up at a price I couldn’t turn down so I picked them up on the day. Kameari seats! I actually don’t think they’re the real deal but who’s to complain.. I think they’ll look great in the car.

I am yet to have these installed, just been a little lazy!

Next up, I bought a pair of very average condition OEM head light covers from Yahoo Japan. Not the cheapest things these days but I think my car needed them and I think they look awesome on the car!

I think they have set the front end off with their chrome trim. Comparing it to how it was before..

Once the head light covers were installed, it was great weather for a drive on Sunday.

Going for the drive though, it was obvious my head gasket was gone. Throughout the day, my car chewed through over 5 ltrs of coolant.

Some great shots were had on the day, thanks to Ying and Charlie.

After these photos were taken, I unfortunately ran over a small branch and it ripped my entire front air dam off along with my indicators and it went under the car.. It was a windy day (heaps of fallen branches) and not being able to see very far in front… :(

Since the new gearbox and clutch has gone in, the car’s been great. I can shift into second gear again without cringing at the crunch it used to make, and the clutch no longer slips. The only downside is that the gearbox does not sound like it’s been refurbished as 5th gear has a slight bearing sound. Other than that and the reverse lights not working, the gearbox/clutch side of things has been great.

I managed to finally dyno the Z as well at Road Track Rally.

It pulled a surprising 84rwkw from the standard L28 with SU carbs! Besides the slightly lean mixtures, after a few adjustments, she pulled very nicely although idle is now a little rich. I unfortunately don’t have a dyno graph.

Now onto future plans, I have done some research into purchasing a set of triple carburetors and I am leaning towards new OER or Weber carbs. Both in kits so that it will be a simple bolt in affair. Only thing holding me back at this stage is the large cost of it, about $2300 for the goods and then another $250 or so for jets to tune.

Along with the carbs, I have also wanted to buy the OEM headlight covers for the Z which has the chrome trims, but again, high cost of about $800 a pair, second hand. I feel like I need them to finish off the look of my front end though..

This post will be continuing on from the previous post about the FS5W71C / RB gearbox conversion which can be seen HERE, and I will also be going through a quick guide of how to change basic maintenance items on an L28 motor. The change in seals, etc, should be the same for the L24 and L26 motors.

Okay, so continuing from where I had left off, to check and see whether your modifications performed on your bell housing is correct, you will need to try and spin the input/output shaft and shift into each gear. If the input/output shaft doesn’t spin, you have an issue or if you can’t shift into any gears, you’ve got an issue. I had those above issues lol I must have bumped a shifter rod and the box felt like it had seized.

If you’re in the same position, you will have to follow the below procedure. First, open your shifter cover and while using a punch, tap the pin down and out.

Once the pin is removed, slide the ‘unknown named’ piece off.

Once that piece is off, you can take the back half of the gearbox off. No other bolts needed to be removed.

If you can’t select any gears, you need to make sure the rods are all lined up. One of my rods, I believe 5th and reverse, were pushed back and so therefore jammed everything else up. Knocking it back into position, I was able to rotate the shaft and select gears again.

Having it in this position, you are in neutral.

If you are mechanically minded, I think you will be able to understand how the gearbox gets into gear, etc. Having never pulled a gearbox apart before, I sure learnt a bit from this small exercise.

Once you’ve knocked the rods back into position, you should be able to put everything back together or make further modifications to your bell housing and making sure everything moves freely.

Only requirement now is to modify the gearbox cross member and cut the dust shield off the tail shaft which will be illustrated in a moment. For now, I wanted to pull the motor out to freshen up a few areas which needed attention.

Just want to say thanks to Tony for lending his brand new engine crane to me and lending a hand! Cheers.

Motor’s all out.

Keeping in mind that I pulled everything out, changed gearboxes because I needed to change a clutch, and what better time to do everything while it’s out… I ended up ordering an Exedy Heavy Duty item.

There are different clutch kits which fit the Z and it is important that the clutch diameter matches your flywheel, and that the pressure plate height remains consistent otherwise you will need a new throw out bearing carrier also.

The clutch kit came with a new clutch, pressure plate, spigot bush, alignment tool and throw out bearing.

Back to the motor, I first pulled things not needed out of the way and gave it a light scrub.

The goal here was to give the motor a fresh lick of paint, change the water pump, welch or better known as freeze plugs and front/rear main seals. I had bought the water pump a while back but never got around to installing it as the previous one never gave me any issues.

New water pump, bolts, front and rear main seals, and welch plugs. The welch plugs, ten are 35mm and 1 is 50mm.

First up, the water pump. Simply unbolt and take off.

Installation of the new item should be a straight forward bolt on. I threw out the gasket and just used a gasket maker which I’ve had better success with.

Next up are the welch/freeze plugs. I have given the block a few coats of Ford blue.

To remove the welch plugs, simply use a chisel or screw driver and a hammer, knock one side of the plug until it falls into the block.

Use a pair of pliers then pull it out. As you can see, they’re already corroding. Better to replace them now than to wait for them to rust through and leak.

Repeat another 10 times. To install the new plugs, get the largest socket you can fit into the new welch plugs, and hammer them into the block. Simple as that! It is recommended that you sand the hole down a bit so that the new welch plugs don’t leak or pop out.

Moving onto the rear main seal.. The best way to remove these I have found is to get a self tapping screw, a drill bit to suit and drill into the seal, making sure you don’t scratch any surface of the crank or block.

Screw the self tapping screw into your new hole.

And using pliers, pull the seal out.

To re-install the new seal, find something of similar diameter, I found a pot which broke after a few taps lol

Place new seal over your crank with a bit of engine oil to lubricate it.

And then use your pot or something similar in diameter to knock it in evenly. You can use your old seal, placed on backwards, to help push the new seal in. Tap it in until it sits flush.

All done!

Now, the front main seal. Your first step is to remove the crank bolt, it is 27mm. You can stop the crank from spinning by installing two old fly wheel bolts on the crank at opposite ends, and put a pole in between them and wedge it on the floor.

I re-installed the bolt without the washer.

You will need a puller to take the pulley off.

This little thing was leaking oil all over ever since I got the car. I’m happy to be changing it!

For the front main seal, I just pried this one out with a screw driver.

To install the new seal, same thing as the rear main seal, find something of similar diameter and tap it in evenly.

Here’s a poor photo of the motor with the pulley and water pump back on.

The following day’s work was to put the motor back into the car, here’s a picture of the accessories back on the motor. Ignore how I’ve lifted the motor, I didn’t trust the manifold bolts.

Time to put the flywheel back on. I bought brand new ARP bolts, they’re the same thread and pitch as those used on 3SGE Toyota motors or RB Nissan motors.

Don’t forget to place your backing plate on first before installing your flywheel.

Using some locktite, torque them up to spec.

Next up, install your new spigot bush.

Grease it up a little bit, find a socket of similar diameter and knock it in gently.

You are now ready to install your clutch and pressure plate. Don’t forget to wipe down the surface of your newly machined flywheel with brake cleaner. They’ve sprayed something on it to reduce corrosion and leaving it on will result in slippage and shudder.

Remember that the fatter end of the clutch faces the pressure plate. See below.

So what you do is place the clutch in between the pressure plate and flywheel, lightly tighten up the pressure plate to hold it in place. Once it’s held in position, before you torque it all up, insert your alignment tool. Make sure it sits snug and tight.

You’re ready to torque up the pressure plate bolts. Tightening them in a crisscross direction to avoid uneven pressure on the clutch.

Take out the alignment tool and this end is ready!

Before you can bolt your gearbox up, you will need to change the throw out bearing. To do so, you will need a socket of similar diameter to the bearing carrier and a few planks of wood.

Rest the bearing on the planks of wood and knock the bearing carrier out of the bearing. Install the new bearing by knocking the carrier into the bearing. Pretty straight forward.

Give the carrier a light grease and install it with the clutch fork in the bell housing.

And then bolt your new gearbox onto the motor.

The motor was then put back into the car as one. Had a few issues, engine crane didn’t clear the car underneath, length of the crane was a tad too short which meant taking the motor and box which was halfway in engine bay back out, resulting in scratches etc..

The damage.

But the motor ended up going in.

Now onto the final part of this gearbox conversion! Finally..

As you can see, the gearbox cross member needs to be modified. The mount on the gearbox sits about 25mm further back compared to the original box.

What I did was section an area of the cross member and shifted it back 23mm from memory and welded it in place. Looks a bit dodgy with the wet paint in the pictures, but it was pretty solid.

I installed the cross member and realised the bolt to tighten the gearbox mount bolt wasn’t accessible, so I had to remove a bit of metal.

I have seen people completely remake their cross member but I don’t have the skills for that lol This will do..

Install it and it should all fit!

The last part to this conversion is the tail shaft. Simply remove the dust shield on the end which goes into the gearbox.

I only removed 10mm to clear the diff mount but I soon realised this wasn’t enough, take my advice, remove the entire cover!

And you’re done… I still need to paint that airbox and polish the cam cover though..

With the RB gearbox, although you don’t need to shorten the tail shaft, your shifter does sit further forward. The below photo is of the shifter in neutral.. It looks like it’s in first or third! Your hand might hit the climate control, you can cut and shut the shifter to reposition it or bend it.. I haven’t decided what to do yet.

My speedo cable plugged right in, so did reverse switch BUT.. The reverse lights stay on the entire time.

I had read that 5 speed boxes don’t require any modifications to the reverse switch on the bell housing, only the 4 speeds do, but I ran into this issue of it staying on. I should have double checked myself, but I can say that 5 speed gearbox will require you to move the switch location forward 25mm or so. I will have to pull the gearbox back out and apart to fix this :(

Other than that, the gearbox has been good. I just need to run in the clutch. There are heaps of articles and documentations on this conversion but if there’s any questions, feel free to ask.